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I flash my press badge and duck under the neon yellow tape cordoning off the scene of the crime. Several of the police officers on the scene glare in my direction as if tempted to apprehend me, though they refrain from interrupting. I’ve walked right up to the lead officer on the scene and tapped him on the shoulder.

He turns around from the conversation he’s having with one of his junior officers, his unibrow ticking up.

“Yeah?” he grunts.

I read the name on his badge. “Officer Christopher Cobb.”

“Yeah?” he grunts again.

“Portia James. Newport Metro News field reporter.”

His blinks are dry and slow. “Yeah,” he repeats a third time. “I know who you are.”

“Then you can guess why I’m here,” I snap. “We have two deaths on our hands and the culprits on the loose. What headway have you made connecting this to the obvious crime organization involved?”

“Obvious crime organization involved?” He croaks out a laugh that sounds arid and hoarse. “Allow me to school you, sweetpea. This is an active police investigation. No assumptions are made. Words like ‘obvious’ are not in our vocabulary. We do the work, study the clues, and determine who the bad guys are?—”

“Surely you’re aware the Belluccis are involved,” I interrupt. “The license plate on the van the individuals left in?—”

“We do the work, study the clues, and determine who the bad guys are,” he interrupts me right back, his tone gruffer, more condescending. He grips at his belt buckle as if asserting dominance and peers down at me like I’m a bug he’d like to squash. “You seem confused, sweetpea. Wandering over here like you’ve got weight to throw around. Why don’t you skip back across the street where it’s safe? You can go cover some other puff piece and win all those news awards you love.”

My face stings like I’ve been slapped across the cheek. I stand taller in my heels, all sixty-six inches of me, and push my shoulders back. “Officer Cobb, I am an official member of the press corp. Meaning I have just as much a right to be here while reporting this incident as you do. May I remind you to show some respect?”

His face scrunches up in distaste, his stained chiclet teeth gritted.

Before he can think up a response, a hand clamps shut on my elbow and I’m drawn back. Baron has followed me.

“Portia, what do you think you’re doing?” he asks. “How many times do I have to remind you?—”

“I’m here to report the story, Baron. Maybe stop handicapping me? It’s no wonder nothing ever gets solved in Newport. From the top down there’re people happy with being complacent. With letting crime bosses take over the city!” I say, throwing up my arms. “Remember what won us that National Press Club award? It was breaking the Kaminski story, going where no other journalists were willing to go ’til we cracked the case! It was not sitting on our hands and playing nice!”

“Shhhh,” he hushes me with a furtive glance around. “You know me, Portia. You know I’m on your side. But we’ve got to be smart. We can’t go making enemies wherever we go. Let’s give it a few hours. Let the police do their thing and we’ll follow up on their leads tomorrow.”

I roll my eyes and fold my arms over my chest. “We both know who’s involved. It couldn’t be more obvious.”

“Which is why we need to wait for the police to gather evidence.”

I don’t like Baron’s answer, though deep down I recognize he has a point. We can’t go shooting off at the hip with little to nothing to go off. Even if we’re ninety-nine percent certain who was involved, we need more than journalistic instinct.

I concede his point and follow him back across the street. Our crew packs up their equipment over the next few minutes and loads it up in the action van we’ve driven over in.

Truthfully, my eyes ache from exhaustion.

Over the last week, I’ve gotten maybe twenty-four hours of sleep. I’ve been so engrossed in my work that my brain hasn’t been able to shut off.

The price to pay after my career’s exploded the way it has. The success has fueled my obsession with work.

I’ve spent years grinding, receiving the soft stories to report on. I was forced to be the coffee runner for the main talent and for executives who couldn’t remember my name.

It wasn’t until me and my team broke the Kaminski story that we started getting a little respect. It wasn’t until my hard-hitting investigative reporting on the Bellucci and Tuco crime families that we were elevated to the A-list.

I’ve worked my ass off to achieve what I have over the last year. I’ve gone from being a no-name field reporter reporting on local car accidents and severe weather conditions to the network’s top pick for any breaking news story.

And I won’t stop where I am.

When I was married to Lincoln, he used to find it cute that his wife was a journalist. He liked flipping on the TV and seeing my little five-minute puff pieces. He liked being able to tell people his adorable wife was on the local news.

But he didn’t take my career seriously. No one did until now.